My coworker claimed he built his whole PC from scratch, then I spotted the Dell service tag sticker still on the case

3 comments

3 Comments

Devil's advocate here - he could have legit bought a used Dell case on the cheap and just reused it. Happens all the time with office refurb parts. The service tag might just be the shell he picked up for 20 bucks at a recycler. Plus building a "whole PC from scratch" usually means the guts, not the case itself.

tara_jones942mo ago

Exactly, I've seen people grab old Dell Optiplex cases for like 15 bucks at surplus sales and throw a whole new build inside them. The service tag thing is just a sticker on a plastic shell, means nothing about what's actually inside. I think calling it "from scratch" is always a bit of a stretch because even the custom cases are mass produced in a factory somewhere. It's more like "assembled from parts I bought" than truly built from nothing. So yeah, a used case with a fresh motherboard and GPU is pretty normal.

jakel362mo agoMost Upvoted

So you're telling me I've been faking my PC builds this whole time and nobody told me? I guess my tower is just a fancy paperweight with extra steps. Nah, you're not wrong though - sometimes a case is just a case. I've got a buddy who's been rocking the same beat-up HP office box for three years now, swaps out the guts twice a year like it's nothing. Pretty funny we call it "building from scratch" when half the time we're just digging through e-waste bins for shells.